A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Before the pandemic there was no greater loyalty program with a gap between what it promised and what it delivered than Marriott Bonvoy. On paper it took the best features of Starwood Preferred Guest with the scale of properties of Marriott and merged them together. And yet the program has simply failed to deliver elite benefits consistently at the property level.
The irony of course is that before acquiring Starwood, Marriott Rewards wasn’t very generous with elites but they were consistent. The Marriott brand across the board was consistency. Now they’re the Forrest Gump of loyalty: you never know what you’re going to get until check-in. This have only gotten worse.
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A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Just because a room is available for sale doesn’t mean a member requesting a Suite Night Award will be upgraded to it if Marriott forecasts that the room will be sold.
A room can be available 24 hours prior to check-in, but Marriott’s systems will still hold back the inventory to possibly sell to someone rather than upgrade the member into that room.
Australia may re-open to international travel July 1. At least that’s what the CEO of Qantas is saying, and Qantas has loaded international flights for sale as of that date. Qantas had previously killed its full international schedule through the end of September.
Seeing this news I immediately went to look for award seats
HSBC has a refer-a-friend offer where they’ll give $600 to new Premier Checking customers. Then once you’re a customer you an refer others and earn more money, in addition to the $600 they’ll earn.
They have a diversity of partners that can be strategically useful in niche cases. And where they’re useful the value is extraordinary.
The Ritz-Carlton Maldives presidential suite runs 4.3 million Marriott points per night, though standard villas are better value. Some hotels offer premium room redemptions for more points, but those are generally going to give you about half a cent per point.
You can make flying economy more enjoyable. It doesn’t have to be the miserable experience most of us have come to expect if you know these 13 tricks. So let’s look forward to when everyone is traveling again and talk about staying comfortable on a long flight, when your class of service isn’t going to do it for you?
If you know these 13 things ahead of time you can make flying economy more enjoyable.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
